


Filling Silences

by tommygirl



Category: Joan of Arcadia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 09:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tommygirl/pseuds/tommygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam tries to help Joan, but she doesn't want to let him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filling Silences

There are pauses now. In every conversation between the two of them. She says that everything’s fine and he nods, pretending to believe her, but then the awkward silence, the pauses of things left unsaid, settle in around them. Adam wishes he was that guy who always knew the right thing to say so that he could take away all this pain Joan was in, but that’s not him. _She’s_ the one who provides the comfort in this relationship. _She’s_ the one who’s good at knowing how to make him feel better. Not him.

Adam sits there, staring at her from behind the protection of his sketch pad. Not that Joan would notice him—she’s lost in her own world where very little penetrates—and for once, he’s thankful for it. He studies her with long, scrutinizing gazes as though he can locate the part of her that’s made her “normal” and standoffish, as though he’ll finally be able to understand her again.

Because, more than anything, he misses her. He misses the way she smiled at him, the way her eyes lit up whenever she undertook another of her projects, and the way their hands always fit so perfectly together. Even that seems to be gone now. She doesn’t really hold his hand anymore and when she does, there’s nothing to it—no connection and no current of electricity running through him.

“Adam, you’re doing it again.”

He’s been caught. He doesn’t even care. If he feels anything, it's amazement that she noticed him at all. She used to be the person who saw everything and now she's like the equivalent of a zombie girl. He hates it, but that feeling has been voided out by indifference. Adam wonders if he’s caught Joan’s newfound love of apathy and he shrugs. Not because he doesn’t know what to say, but that he doesn’t care anymore. No reasoning will satisfy her, no words will get through, and nothing he says will make her better.

Joan rolls her eyes and said, “Could you, you know, stop?”

“Sorry.”

“I’m not broken or anything. I was sick. Now I’m not. No more talking to imaginary beings.”

Adam winces as her eyes practically burn through him. He’s not sure how he became the scapegoat in this illness of hers or what exactly he was supposed to do about it. When she had told him she talked to God...well, the doctor had said that her sickness made her see things and that it was typical to hallucinate...when she talked to him...he couldn’t lie to her. He couldn’t say that he believed her, no matter what he promised, because it couldn’t be possible. So instead he offered up what he could—that he knew she was sick and that he believed that she believed it...but what good had that done? And if there was a God, why would he let Joan suffer like this?

Joan leans over and slaps his sketchbook down. She lets out a loud, frustrated sigh and exclaims, “Why do you keep putting up with me?”

“Huh?”

“Look at how I’m treating you, Adam, and you sit there and take it. What’s wrong with you?”

“I-I love you, Jane.”

She pauses. Again another long, uncomfortable quiet while her face contorts from fury to sadness to nothing and back to fury again. She stands up and shakes her head, “I can’t do this right now.”

“Do what?”

“This,” she motions between the two of them and adds, “I believe in you, Adam, and I believe you when you tell me something.”

“And that’s bad?”

“It is when it messes everything else up. I wanted you to believe me because then I’d know it’s true. Because you wouldn’t lie to me. Because I trust you more than anyone else.”

“You were sick—“

“He still tries to talk to me.”

“What?”

“God. Yahweh. _The Big Guy_. Whatever you want to call HIM. He still tries to talk to me. So is this still part of the sickness or am I crazy? Since, ya know, it can’t possibly be true otherwise you’d believe me.”

“Jane—“

She shakes her head again and Adam tries to maintain his calm. He doesn’t want to fight with her. He doesn’t want to keep seeing that lost aura to her. He doesn’t want a relationship like this with Joan. So where does that leave them?

“What do you want from me?” He asks. He can’t believe he actually said it out loud. He’s thought it about a hundred times over the course of the summer. He’s walked off when things have gotten too hard. He's even come close to shouting at her...but to say the words to her? He knows he’s reached a breaking point and that scares him. Because he never thought he was the type of guy who had a breaking point or that, if he did, it would involve his relationship with Joan.

She shrugs and says, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t—I love you, Adam, but it’s like nothing makes sense right now. I keep worrying about every decision I make. I can’t help but feel like this mess of a person and how could you want to be around that?”

“Jane—“

She cuts him off, “ _I_ don’t want to be around it, but I sorta have to...and everything’s all messed up right now.”

“We can get through it.”

“This isn’t a ‘we’ thing, Adam. This is all me. You can’t fix this,” she replies. She leans down and kisses him on the cheek. It’s weird because it’s the first time in months that he feels close to her and it’s because she wants to distance herself from him. She hovers close to his face, smiles weakly and says, “I’m gonna head home. I’ll talk to you later, k?”

He nods. Words escape him. There is no way to make sense of everything running through his head, every feeling drilling in his chest. There is nothing but another pause to get them through to the next day. So he nods and watches her leave.

_{Fin}_

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 15minuteficlets & word # 67 = challenge.


End file.
